Characters include a man with one arm, a woman who is a champion swimmer who is in love with the one armed man, and I think a young girl. I got to the point where the swimmer is killed, and lost the book. I think it was published in the 1980s.
A fighter pilot crash-lands on an island and is sucked into a whirlpool of sand, finding a civilization deep inside the Earth. He is imprisoned there and manages to escape with a few others after a long time. When he describes what happened, no one believes him.
Back in 1952 or 1953, when I was 4 or 5 years old, I adored a book we took out from the Brooklyn library. I cannot remember much except that there were illustrations of a fisherman with nets full of bright colorful fish. It’s not Scupper the Sailor Dog. I was a bookseller for over 20 years and I was never able to track down this book.
It is a kids cardboard picture book that each time you turn the page all the objects are in a different shades of a single color and one object is of a different color. There are words on the pages like rhymes that highlight the object that is of a different color (for example a gray umbrella among a bunch of yellow items). The title might have rainbow in it. On the cover I think there are circle cutouts that get wider and wider that hint at the colors featured.
A book or possibly short story about 3 elves and a hole in the wall that speaks to them.
This story was read to the class by my third grade teacher at Hubbell School in Des Moines, IA, in 1949. I remember that we were entranced by it and insisted on making it into a drama. For our play the “elves” dressed in red long johns and the boy (Kenneth Brown) who devised the “hole” was cast in that role. I would be grateful if someone could direct me to it because I don’t remember the story and would like to see whether, as an adult, I can fathom what it was that charmed us so.
A boy opens his eyes and begins to see Not a book, but a short story I read in 1959 in sophomore English, a slight “a-boy-goes-on-a -journey” kind of story and the first piece of literature in which I recognized myself and one that I still recall with goosebumps. I think it was named “Dell,” the name of an adolescent boy living on a Midwestern farm. He is awakened one summer night by distant honky-tonk music coming through his bedroom window, a foreign intrusion into his otherwise quiet life. Arising, he goes outside looking for its source. Following the sound, he crosses several dark fields, climbs a small hill and looks out in the distance to see, far away but close enough to clearly discern a highway truck stop, ablaze with tall lights and neon signs, like a light-bomb on the black prairie floor. Some rigs are parked, their radios blaring; others are pulling out into the night with the shafts of their headlights illuminating their journey into the darkness, going—where? That’s what Dell wants to know, with an immediacy, an insistence previously unknown to him. From that story to a degree in English several years later. It was my “first step” in the journey and I would love to recover it if possible. Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
Here is what I’m trying to find: A children’s picture book, I believe mostly black and white line drawings, of a boy who wakes up to find a box in his backyard, which he climbs into using a ladder. Inside the box is another box that he also climbs into, and so on and so forth.
Trying to remember a wonderful novel set in the 1950’s or 1960’s. I believe the main characters’ names were Anne and Neil. She was from a poor family, but would make fashionable outfits for herself to catch Neil’s eye. After they married, he went into politics. She tried hard to make Neil eat meals with all four food groups. They had a couple children. In the end of the book, it’s terribly hot in the city and Anne is lying down trying to nap, and Neil comes home and tells her he has been nominated to run for President.
I would be so grateful if you could find my favorite chapter book as a child! It’s about a friendship between two girls, perhaps a summertime friendship. They spend time in a tree house together. The paperback cover painting was in browns and greens of the girls in the tree house. Likely, I bought it through Scholastic Books when they had those mini-catalogs sent to schools. It came out in paper sometime in the mid 1960s.
I’m looking for a book that I have only heard a colleague speak very briefly about. He is a teacher and remembers reading a short story within a book of a collection of short stories, when he was studying at Uni, which would have been approx. 1998-2002. But it could have been published much before that. He said the story was about a boy who caught the measles/mumps/chickenpox. He found this other planet/dimension/bubble??? (sorry) where everyone that lived there were basically superhumans. They hadn’t been ill at all. Then this boy entered their “world” and all of these superhumans died because they had been so protected from diseases that they had no immune system, so contact with the measles/mumps/chickenpox killed them. That is all I know. I’m guessing the moral of the story was to do with the benefits/detriments of vaccinations. I have tried searching everywhere with no luck. I searched this site and found one called “Brave New World” but that doesn’t sound like it. I would love to find this book – my colleague said he is so fond of it but doesn’t remember the title or book it was in.
Thank you for your help.